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[...] If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols. Satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, and Suomi NPP “see” them as well, though they offer a completely different perspective from hundreds of kilometers above Earth’s surface. A version of a NASA model called the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) offers a similarly expansive view of the mishmash of particles that dance and swirl through the atmosphere.
The visualization above highlights GEOS FP model output for aerosols on August 23, 2018. On that day, huge plumes of smoke drifted over North America and Africa, three different tropical cyclones churned in the Pacific Ocean, and large clouds of dust blew over deserts in Africa and Asia. The storms are visible within giant swirls of sea salt aerosol (blue), which winds loft into the air as part of sea spray . Black carbon particles (red) are among the particles emitted by fires; vehicle and factory emissions are another common source. Particles the model classified as dust are shown in purple. The visualization includes a layer of night light data collected by the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP that shows the locations of towns and cities.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Monday August 27 2018, @09:36PM (1 child)
The smoke here in Calgary has been really miserable for the last 3 weeks or so. Today is finally clear enough to see the mountains. It's nice to breathe again. The smoke was seriously getting to me.
Last summer was super smoky too. There are many people here that are worrying that a smoky August is the new normal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:30PM
Victoria here. I know what you mean. We've had several days of air quality warnings and one day where my house smelled like there was a fire inside. It was enough that I almost got up to check the rooms. It didn't seem like a fire burning hundreds of miles away on the mainland.
Also very glad it has let up for now.